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Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

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Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#51

Post by mike_hearn »

Thaxll wrote: post #3
pulse7 wrote: post #2

Maybe we will soon see the Java Virtual Machine implemented wholly in (a subset of) Java...

It's a good point, after so long why the JVM is not written in Java actually? For example the Go runtime and I think C# as well are written in their respective language. https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/runtime https://github.com/dotnet/runtime

Parts of it are written in Java. Over time, more of the JVM has been rewritten in Java. For example recently parts of the reflection subsystem were rewritten in Java. Of course many libraries have been ported over time too.

By the way, the .NET CLR is AFAIK written in C++, like with Hotspot. It's not fully self-hosting.

It's a tricky process because HotSpot is highly performance sensitive code. People won't accept regressions just to convenience the JDK maintainers. Java meanwhile is deliberately a simple language to make it accessible for people, so you lose some low level techniques that are useful for performance. Nonetheless, GraalVM native image has proven that you can achieve HotSpot like performance with a JVM written in Java. However it requires a big change in the compilation model that isn't always appropriate.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#52

Post by dopidopHN »

bluejekyll wrote: post #45
ccleve wrote: post #18

I don't say nice things about Oracle very often, but they deserve some praise here. Graal is a very, very ambitious project, and Oracle has been funding it for years. It's still rough around the edges, but it promises to enable new programming languages to run on a high-performance JVM, compiled to native code. Write-once, run anywhere, at native speed. And now they're donating it. It's very decent of them.

It may not only be benevolence though. The JVM and Graal are not the only game in town anymore. Webassembly is growing in various areas, clienside, edge, backend. WASM fills much of the same needs as Graal, and then some since it’s embedded in every major browser. This move is good for Graal, as it will help it compete, but there’s still a big question in my mind at least about if Graal is going to be able to compete…

Yeah. I see that as a way to position the JVM for cloud-function and other highly available and disposable compute.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#53

Post by lostmsu »

bluejekyll wrote: post #45
ccleve wrote: post #18

I don't say nice things about Oracle very often, but they deserve some praise here. Graal is a very, very ambitious project, and Oracle has been funding it for years. It's still rough around the edges, but it promises to enable new programming languages to run on a high-performance JVM, compiled to native code. Write-once, run anywhere, at native speed. And now they're donating it. It's very decent of them.

It may not only be benevolence though. The JVM and Graal are not the only game in town anymore. Webassembly is growing in various areas, clienside, edge, backend. WASM fills much of the same needs as Graal, and then some since it’s embedded in every major browser. This move is good for Graal, as it will help it compete, but there’s still a big question in my mind at least about if Graal is going to be able to compete…

WASM is not really a replacement for Graal. Graal is more of a language implementation framework, while WASM is a compilation target.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#55

Post by vips7L »

bluejekyll wrote: post #45
ccleve wrote: post #18

I don't say nice things about Oracle very often, but they deserve some praise here. Graal is a very, very ambitious project, and Oracle has been funding it for years. It's still rough around the edges, but it promises to enable new programming languages to run on a high-performance JVM, compiled to native code. Write-once, run anywhere, at native speed. And now they're donating it. It's very decent of them.

It may not only be benevolence though. The JVM and Graal are not the only game in town anymore. Webassembly is growing in various areas, clienside, edge, backend. WASM fills much of the same needs as Graal, and then some since it’s embedded in every major browser. This move is good for Graal, as it will help it compete, but there’s still a big question in my mind at least about if Graal is going to be able to compete…

Is there a current WASM implementation that can out perform HotSpot? Will WASM ever outperform it? I highly doubt it.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#56

Post by l2dy »

ccleve wrote: post #18

I don't say nice things about Oracle very often, but they deserve some praise here. Graal is a very, very ambitious project, and Oracle has been funding it for years. It's still rough around the edges, but it promises to enable new programming languages to run on a high-performance JVM, compiled to native code. Write-once, run anywhere, at native speed. And now they're donating it. It's very decent of them.

> Oracle does not currently intend to contribute the polyglot technologies supporting other languages such as Python, Ruby, R, and JavaScript.

Beware that this polyglot feature you've mentioned is not moving to OpenJDK.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#57

Post by vips7L »

Thaxll wrote: post #3
pulse7 wrote: post #2

Maybe we will soon see the Java Virtual Machine implemented wholly in (a subset of) Java...

It's a good point, after so long why the JVM is not written in Java actually? For example the Go runtime and I think C# as well are written in their respective language. https://github.com/golang/go/tree/master/src/runtime https://github.com/dotnet/runtime

The core CLR is written in C++ just like HotSpot.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#58

Post by hotpotamus »

nvrspyx wrote: post #47
ccleve wrote: post #18

I don't say nice things about Oracle very often, but they deserve some praise here. Graal is a very, very ambitious project, and Oracle has been funding it for years. It's still rough around the edges, but it promises to enable new programming languages to run on a high-performance JVM, compiled to native code. Write-once, run anywhere, at native speed. And now they're donating it. It's very decent of them.

I know absolutely nothing about Oracle, GraalVM, OpenJDK, or Java development in general. I haven't used Java since a CS intro class during my undergrad like 10 years ago. Despite this, I've internally adopted the general consensus that Oracle is a terrible, greedy company. Can someone play devil's advocate to explain how this news may actually favor this negative view of Oracle? The sentiment in this thread is prais…

There's an epic rant on youtube from one of the old Sun guys that gets linked occasionally. I can't remember all of it, but basically it goes that Larry Ellison/Oracle is just as simple as a lawnmower - if you stick your hand in it; it'll shred it without emotion because it's just an unthinking machine that cuts whatever you put into in the same way that Oracle is a machine to make money.

I've been at this long enough to have had my own experiences and they are indeed as bad as everyone has warned me, but it does feel like something you have to experience yourself (or at least through a trusted party like in my case) to totally believe.

Re: Oracle Contributing GraalVM Community Edition Java Code to OpenJDK

#60

Post by vbezhenar »

nvrspyx wrote: post #47
ccleve wrote: post #18

I don't say nice things about Oracle very often, but they deserve some praise here. Graal is a very, very ambitious project, and Oracle has been funding it for years. It's still rough around the edges, but it promises to enable new programming languages to run on a high-performance JVM, compiled to native code. Write-once, run anywhere, at native speed. And now they're donating it. It's very decent of them.

I know absolutely nothing about Oracle, GraalVM, OpenJDK, or Java development in general. I haven't used Java since a CS intro class during my undergrad like 10 years ago. Despite this, I've internally adopted the general consensus that Oracle is a terrible, greedy company. Can someone play devil's advocate to explain how this news may actually favor this negative view of Oracle? The sentiment in this thread is prais…

I'm java developer for the last 15 years or something like that and I can't really say much bad about Oracle Java. IMO Oracle got a good team working on Java. Java is completely open source. There are many builds of Java from different companies, I like liberica one, for example (be aware of Russian roots, though).

I have no idea about this graal thing and I think it's rather niche application. I played with it but concluded that it's not ready for me yet.

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